Mt. Lookout : Innovation + Startup News

Today, Detroit-based Digerati launches its Intern in Ohio program to the public, which is sponsored by the University of Toledo. Like eHarmony, the program uses an advanced matching algorithm to match students with internship opportunities.
 
Intern in Ohio is free to both students who are looking for internships and businesses who want to post internships. To register, students and employers visit Intern in Ohio’s website to sign up and create a profile or post internship opportunities. Students fill out a short questionnaire about their preferences, and employers share information about the position. The system then identifies the top seven matches for each student, as well as for each position. When the match is made, both the student and employer are notified, and they must show interest before any contact information is shared.
 
“We encourage diverse companies—large and small, for-profit and nonprofit, government and corporate,” says Wendy Pittman, director of Digerati’s Classroom to Career. “It’s a great chance for employers to broadcast their company and internship program across the state and reach a larger pool of applicants.”
 
Only companies in Ohio can post opportunities to the Intern in Ohio website, but all types of internships are welcome. There are posts for marketing, engineering and social media, among others, says Pittman.
 
The program is open to all students who live in Ohio, whether they’re in-state or out-of-state students. Research shows that not only do internships often lead employment offers after graduation, but that students are more likely to remain in an area where they held and internship.
 
“This is the first replication of the Classroom to Career technology from Michigan to Ohio,” says Pittman. “Experiential learning is a game-changer; and we’re looking forward to working with smaller communities to make a difference.”
 
In 2011, Digerati launched its Intern in Michigan program, which has resulted in more than 127,000 matches and introductions between students and employers. Over 1,000 Michigan businesses have posted 4,824 internship opportunities, and 1,049 colleges and universities in the state use the site.
 
Full disclosure: Soapbox’s parent company, IMG, supplies content to Intern in Ohio on a contractual basis.
 
By Caitlin Koenig
Follow Caitlin on Twitter

Going on maternity leave changed Gail Yisreal’s life in more ways than having a new baby to take care of.
 
When she returned to work, Yisreal says she learned her position was no longer there, so she began to look for a different job.

As wife and mother to a blended family of nine children, she might bake up to 11 birthday cakes in a year. But she hadn’t considered turning her knack for kneading dough into earning dough until she baked a wedding cake for a couple from her family’s place of worship. Not only did they like the cake, they suggested she start selling them.
 
Listening to her fans, Yisreal founded A “Mother’s Touch” Cakes with the nurturing tagline, “Making fresh homemade cakes when you don’t have the time.” Celebrating her two-year anniversary as a registered business in August 2012, A “Mother’s Touch” features signature and custom made flavors of fresh, savory gourmet, organic and vegan cakes and cupcakes that are good—and good for you.
 
“I didn’t know anything about decorating, so I took a class to learn more decorating skills," Yisreal says. "And I was shocked to find out that 95 percent of the cakes you buy are box cakes—because everybody wants the decoration. I started doing some research about the trans-fats and artificial ingredients, and I vowed that everything I baked would always be natural and from scratch.”  
 
After working as a waitress for two years and in management at Starbucks for six years, Yisreal developed a love for coffee. She jokes that most ex-Starbucks managers feel they know enough about coffee to create their own line, which she actually did for A “Mother’s Touch.”
 
Having tried organic coffees with weak flavor profiles, she researched and found Dean’s Beans, a fair-trade pioneer that allowed her to design her own custom blends. Her signature A “Mother’s Touch” blend is made with Mexican and Indonesian beans and pairs with her carrot cake as an after-dinner coffee.
 
“I’m really proud of my coffee and the fact that it really was custom blended for what I wanted to complement my desserts,” Yisreal says. And, true to her mission to serve natural, sustainable goods, she says that her blends are 100 percent organic, fair-trade certified and are shade grown.
 
Being on the scene without a storefront hasn’t stopped Yisreal. Instead, she’s building her brand as the “cupcake lady” who networks everywhere and invites people to taste samples of her creations. Yisreal also tapped into hidden markets by hosting deals through social media.
 
“I did a Living Social promotion last year, which was huge,” Yisreal says. “That first day, I think I got 1,500 hits on my website, and probably about 85 deals, which I thought was really good for people who didn’t know who I was.”
 
And even though she sells more cakes today, the ease of transporting cupcakes built her clientele.
 
“When I first came out, because of my financial situation, literally, cupcakes were paying my rent,” she says. After she and her husband separated, she remembers what it was like to go from making an annual salary of $60,000 to less than $20,000 a year. But she doesn’t do it all alone.
 
“I have three almost-teenage girls; 12, soon to be 15 and 17, so they are my preppers,” Yisreal explains. “It’s hilarious because we’ll be in the kitchen and everybody has their big bonnets on, and they’re scraping carrots, mashing fruit, lining the liners. I have a girlfriend who I’ll sometimes sub-contract out to do deliveries. And if it’s a huge event—like for the Autism Foundation, I had to knock out 40 dozen cupcakes—I have two sisters, and at the time I had just split up with my husband so we were in literally an 800-square-foot apartment. The kitchen was all of maybe 150-square-feet, we put out six-foot tables and we were like an assembly line! It was hilarious, but we got it done. It was like an I Love Lucy episode!”
 
By Mildred Fallen

Donna Browning was a fitness teacher with an annoying problem: hair in her face and headbands that would not stay put. Today, she’s selling her solution to that problem, dubbed “Sweaty Bands,” to women who’ve embraced her company’s tagline: “OMG…they don’t slip!”

An endorphin addict—she’s taught everything from Pilates and yoga to sculpting classes and cardio sessions—Browning loved to exercise, but hated hair accessories that didn’t work with the microphone she wore to teach.

Sure she could solve the problem, she borrowed a sewing machine from a friend, grabbed supplies from a craft store and churned out headband after headband until she found an adjustable, elastic band that stayed in place.

Soon, she was toting a bag full of the headbands in her gym bag and selling them to friends at the gym. After driving up to Cleveland for some training from Ladies Who Launch, an organization that helps women become entrepreneurs, she launched Sweaty Bands.

“I didn’t want it to be a preppy ribbon-in-the-hair thing," Browning says. "I wanted it to be a kick your butt, sporty accessory." With a range of styles, including custom options, she says the company’s product has become so popular that now they’re noticing knockoffs popping up.

Still, Browning says, few competitors rival her team of in-house designers: “We’re constantly meeting, looking at magazines, going to the mall, and checking out upcoming trends so that what we have, nobody else will have.” These days, she’s focusing on custom orders for clients as large as John Freida, Pantene and Skinny Girl—or as small as a single headband.

By Robin Donovan

There’s something decidedly sci-fi about digitizing green plants, but that’s what a new partnership between the Cincinnati Park Board and local tech startup QuipTV hopes to achieve.

This month, the duo launched a pilot project that allows Ault Park visitors to access informative videos about specific plants, the community and the park by using smartphones or handheld devices to scan QR-tagged plants. 

So far, 87 specimens have been tagged with another 40 to be added in the coming weeks, according to the Parks. Plans are also in the works to extend the project to Krohn Conservatory in time for its 2012 holiday exhibit, “Trains, Trestles & Traditions,” which runs Nov. 17-Jan. 6.

“We would like to expand the program to more locations in the future, but we will wait to see some of the responses from the pilot projects at Ault and Krohn,” says Deborah Allison, business services manager at the Parks.

You don’t have to visit the sites to learn about the plants, either. The informative videos can also be accessed remotely via the Cincinnati Parks’ YouTube channel and its mobile app, which was launched in July.

According to Kris Kubicki, co-founder of QuipTV, the videos also direct users to local vendors that sell the featured plants.

“We own a small nursery and were trying to figure out a way to generate enthusiasm for plants and let people know that we exist,” says Kubicki. “Recognizing that many small businesses are struggling and need the support of their community, this project helps them, too. In this technology-driven culture with smartphones in the hands of many, we can take a moment of curiosity and educate with a 20-50-second video.”

Organizers hope the project will help people connect more with the outdoors and interact with other Cincinnatians through existing groups like the Greater Cincinnati Master Gardener Association and the Civic Garden Center.

“This project engages people with their surroundings and provides options for citizens to be more proactive,” says Kubicki. “We all need each other. Supporting our local communities is where we start fixing the future.”

By Hannah Purnell
Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Imagine the work that goes into a batch of cookies: mixing, rolling, baking, decorating and washing. Now imagine baking 1,000 cookies per month. That’s how many Debbie DeGeer typically creates at Mt Lookout Sweets, a bakery she runs from her Mt. Lookout home – complete with a commercial kitchen in the basement – each month.

That’s 12,000 cookies a year, but DeGeer isn’t counting. Baking helps keep her hands busy and her creative mind active while she cares for her aging mother, who helping instill in DeGeer a love of floury hands and blustery ovens. DeGeer’s mother lives with Alzheimer’s, and the duo spends their share of quiet nights at home. 

Baking started as “a kind of therapy,” and DeGeer often arrived at Comey Shepherd, the real estate agency where she works, laden with cookies. Her creations with the company logo on them were particularly popular for the company’s open houses, and from there, the requests grew.

DeGeer specializes in hand-decorated sugar cookies that are part art and part dessert, and she has a design for everyone. When Keidel, a Cincinnati-based plumbing, cabinetry, appliance and lighting contractor, celebrated its 100^th anniversary, DeGeer created confections in the shape of bathtubs, light bulbs and even toilets.

“I never thought in my life I would make a cute toilet, but I did,” DeGeer says.

Active with other cookie pros, dubbed “cookiers,” on Facebook, DeGeer has about 1,200 Facebook fans for her business, and says it’s a top source of referrals, along with word-of-mouth.

Mt Lookout Sweets averages three to four orders per week, with DeGreer's capacity filling up quickly around the holidays and in late spring or early summer as couples plan their weddings. DeGeer typically requests a week’s notice for each order and more during busy seasons.

By Robin Donovan

Cincinnati-based Writer Initiative Network, a highly skilled team of medical writers, is growing with more than 300 writers in the WIN network since its 2009 founding.

WIN is part of Keith Kleeman's Medical Communication Consultants company founded in 2004. Based in Mt. Lookout, the company provides a wide variety of contract writing services for medical device and pharmaceutical clients. MCC relies on a network of highly educated, experienced writers with medical backgrounds who write clinical reports, patient narratives, risk benefit analysis and more.

WIN writers are currently working with five to 15 companies at a time; most clients are referrals. Writers work remotely from across the country and are all contract employees. Kleeman's low-overhead, expertise-based model allows him to match writers with skills specific to client needs quickly and efficiently, he says.

He maintains the writers' abilities to work on everything from pre-clinical to marketing trials can shave months off the drug development process and save a company up to $100 million in development costs.

The company vets its writers in a 3-stage, rigorous process. The first stage details every aspect of medical writing experience in the last 5 years. If that experience is sufficient, the writers then take an online writing exam. If they pass, they move on to a battery of personal interviews. Only if they pass all phases of the vetting process are they fully approved and available for projects.

“We have over 300 writers in the WIN Network, with over 100 of those fully vetted, and the rest at some stage of approval,” Kleeman says.

WIN is growing as the drug and medical device development process is changing; companies are outsourcing more processes to experts in this labor-intensive industry. But that trend is just part of WIN's growth, Kleeman says.

“We differentiate ourselves greatly from other vendors or suppliers by our unique company structure, which leads to the best writers for a very competitive, if not better, price. So, while outsourcing in the pharma world has grown, our growth has been larger than that of our competitors,” he says.

By Feoshia Henderson
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A survey co-sponsored by BlackBook EMG and Cincinnati USA Chamber's HYPE is looking for young professionals to share their work and community life experiences to gauge the risk of the region losing young talent.

The 25-question survey, located here, takes about 10 minutes to finish. It's geared toward anyone who lives in the metro Cincinnati area and is employed. The results will be unveiled at the HYPE talent symposium Oct. 19. The symposium's theme is "Ignite the Fire! Leverage Cincinnati's strengths as part of your recruitment and retention strategies."

BlackBook, whose Compass technology matches employee performance with local events, venues and businesses, has a 2,000-person response goal for the survey. So far, just under 1,000 people have responded, said Carla Messer, Blackbook's senior vice president of operations. To encourage responses, participants can enter to win one of three iPads. Survey results are kept confidential.

The survey asks questions related to the concept of "community embeddedness" or the experiences, people and places outside of work that keep a person in a particular area.

"The survey asks how an employee fits into culture of an organization, and also how people are connected to other people and places where they live. At the workplace you're made to feel like it would be a great sacrifice to leave, but from a community standpoint often things outside the workplace that keep people retained in the organization aren't considered. Things, if you left behind, like a country club, church or neighbors would feel like a big sacrifice to leave," Messer said.

The survey is an effort to drill down into how or even if workers have those outside connections. Under the theory of community embeddedness, the more satisfying community links a person has, the less likely they are to leave a current city or place of employment.

"Companies spend a lot of time and money trying to explain why people leave. We are trying to evaluate why people stay, and create those connections and experiences that get people to stay," Messer said.

The survey is open until Oct. 1.

Writer: Feoshia Henderson
Source: Carla Messer, Blackbook senior vice president of operations

You can follow Feoshia on twitter @feoshiawrites

Keith Kleeman's Writer's Initiative Network (or WIN) is on the fast-track to growth with an innovative approach to outsourced medical writing that aims to help drug companies fulfill FDA regulations regarding new drug development and approval.

The Writer's Initiative Network is part of Kleeman's six-year-old Medical Communication Consultants company.  Based in Mt. Lookout, where Kleeman also lives, the company provides a wide variety of contract writing services for medical and pharmaceutical clients. MCC relies on a network of highly educated, experienced writers with medical backgrounds who work with medical companies to write clinical reports, patent narratives, risk benefit analysis and much more.

WIN is an outgrowth of his company specifically aimed at the drug development and approval process. Unveiled before the American Medical Writer's Association last fall, WIN is believed to be the industry's first creative resource organization of expert medical writers who are assigned to specific drug development projects based on experience and drug or medical device expertise.

"There's not another company in U.S. that has the software in place we have set up to take advantage of the pool of talent out there, and to retain affordability," said Kleeman.  Kleeman, a Cincinnati native with a background in medical writing, worked at Eli Lilly before returning to the Queen City to start his own company.

WIN currently employees 106 medical writers across the country. Kleeman believes his model, which keeps overhead low and matches writers to projects based on their specific backgrounds and specialties, is the wave of the future in outsourced medical writing. The company's revenue grew 46 percent in 2009.

WIN's writers go through a rigorous testing system before being hired. They must have an advanced degree and a minimum of three years' clinical regulatory experience. They undergo written exams and personal interviews assuring the writer is competent for this highly technical work.

Kleeman said unlike similar companies that have a smaller group of full-time writers WIN's writers are matched with outside companies based on expertise, not availability.

"That is a huge difference in maintaining affordability and flexibility," he said.

He maintains the writer's ability to quickly and efficiently work on everything from pre-clinical to marketing trails can shave month's off the drug development process, saving a company up to $100 million in development costs.

Writer: Feoshia Henderson
Source: Keith Kleeman, Medical Communication Consultants founder

You can follow Feoshia on twitter @feoshiasoapbox

Thousands of low-income Cincinnati Public Schools students should get a better shot at getting to college with a $2.4 million federal grant to a Cincinnati partnership led by the University of Cincinnati. The grant, expected to be for a total of six years, will be matched in value of services contributed by the partnership, called GEARUP SCORES, led by UC and Cincinnati Public Schools.

GEARUP stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, and it emphasizes increasing the number of disadvantaged students prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. The grant is the highest ever awarded to the partnership since it was first funded in 1999.
 
The partnership will support sixth-and-seventh-grade students in 31 Cincinnati Public Schools and follow them through their high-school graduation. For the first time, this new funding will also track the success of GEARUP students as they enter their first year of college, trade school or other postsecondary  education.

A total of 4,000 students will be linked through the program over the six-year period, supported by academic and enrichment programs, advising and mentoring to increase student achievement. The program also educates students and their families about higher education options, about dual-enrollment programs in  which students earn high-school and college credit, and about the financial resources to get to college.

Writer: David Holthaus
Source: Dawn Fuller, UC

In the midst of a nationwide housing crisis, Money magazine came up with a list of the six “best places to buy a home these days,” and put Cincinnati on it. Money said its list is of “the six cities where home prices are likely to rise the most - or fall the least - in the next 12 months.” Of Cincinnati, the magazine said, “The city's manufacturing-heavy economy should benefit from the falling dollar. Commercial building is up, and high-end developments are moving in.”

Home prices have indeed been relatively stable in Greater Cincinnati compared to other metropolitan markets. A 20-city housing study recently reported by the S&P Case Schiller Group found that the average home-selling price in Cincinnati fell 2.5 percent from October 2006 to October 2007, compared to an average drop of 6.1 percent in the 20 cities surveyed.

Money's ranking "is great news considering the national trends," said Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory. "The ranking confirms the strength of our housing market."

Writer: David Holthaus
Source: Money magazine

One day after he proposed a plan to create 80,000 jobs in Ohio, Gov. Ted Strickland went on the road to visit three growing small businesses in the Hamilton County Business Center, an incubator for entrepreneurial ventures.

His visit to Cincinnati highlighted the role of the Hamilton County Development Co., a non-profit organization that owns the incubator, in fostering job growth. Strickland met with Jacobs Automation, which designs machines meant to reduce costs for the packaging industry; with Emersion Design, an architecture, engineering, planning and design firm that has grown from four partners to a team of 13; and with Private Health News, which offers print and electronic marketing materials and information to the health care industry and has seen revenue grow 65 percent in the last 12 months.

“It’s gratifying that the governor recognizes the importance of small business in the future economic prosperity of the state,” said David Main, president of the Hamilton County Development Co.

Source: David Main, Hamilton County Development Co.
Writer: David Holthaus